BSoUP in focus magazine issue 120

Spring / Summer 2022 quickly realised we were also going to have to carry our heavy cameras up and down those steps each day. On the other hand, the rooms were large and comfortable enough for the three of us and it was just as well we had already planned to eat out all of the time, as the kitchen was poorly equipped. On the plus side, diving by truck is a very slick operation. You pick up your vehicle, approach the drive- thru building close-by to collect your dive gear and tanks for the day, which are easily stowed in the open compartment at the back of your truck, and off you go. You drive to your designated dive site and park on the beach. There are no jetties. Access to the water is ONLY from the beach. And if only they were smooth sandy beaches…… but no; for an underwater photographer it is a logistical nightmare. You have to clamber over boulders and dead coral heads – at your peril! It necessarily became a team effort simply to get into the water. One person would enter the water with no dive gear and then you would pass him all the cameras. Then you can get in and put your fins on and take the cameras so that he can get ready. Once you are in, however, it is an excellent place to be. So, what is there to see? Well, it is the tail end of the Caribbean let’s BBSSooUUPP iinn ffooccuuss ••110011

Dive trucks parked along the beach at Salt Pier Squid at Salt Pier 102 • BSoUP in focus

not forget, which is famous for barrel of the house-reef. With the opportunity sponges, trumpet fish, whip corals, for frequent visits, they soon get used French Angelfish and the occasional to you and become curious and tarpon. Bonaire does not disappoint. willing subjects. All of the above and more… but the thing about Bonaire is, the fact that it Trumpetfish are everywhere; they has been designated a Marine Park hang around vertically, horizontally, for more than forty years, means that individually or in pairs, motionless, the fish are simply not afraid. There and when flustered, they try to hide in may be only a relatively few species soft coral mimicking the angle of the around, when compared, say, to the fronds. lush biodiversity of Indonesia, but those that are there are in abundance On the house reef at Captain Don’s, and make very accessible subjects. (also accessible from Buddy Dive Resort), there is a lovely little wreck just I have always loved the slightly to the left of the rope as you go down, sheepish behaviour of French and at only 12m is accessible by all. Angelfish with their fantastic livery of It is full of life. dappled grey with bright yellow make- up. Here they are in twos, threes and In particular, the sergeant majors have even fours and in the shallow waters made good use of the smooth flat Spring / Summer 2022 BSoUP in focus • 103

surfaces of the wreck for laying their enough to send the sergeant majors purple patches of eggs, vigorously scurrying which gives the signal to defended by a single fish, sometimes other reef fish to dive in and devour thrusting itself right at you if you get the eggs. As a new diver, years ago, it too close. Any diver familiar with them will know that your mere presence is took me a while to realise that this was happening the first time around as a 104 • BSoUP in focus

Surgeonfish at Salt Pier In fact, this is Secretary Blenny heaven. I found one small boulder, like a two- feeding frenzy took place. foot cube in size, that was completely Now, put your macro eyes on and covered with tiny heads poking out. you will discover on many of the Now, you know how you kind of take surrounding boulders that make up these species’ names for granted, and the reef, the fabulously wonky-eyed Secretary Blenny. BSoUP in focus • 105 Spring / Summer 2022

perhaps wouldn’t even question why Parking up on the beach by the Salt it is called this or that? I sent some of Pier, very carefully, you enter the water my images to a non-diving friend and from the beach and make your way she asked why the name? It got me out to any of the seven clusters of thinking so I looked it up. Turns out pylons which support the pier. The that it was named after Mary George, water is quite shallow once you get to the Secretary of Dr. James Bohlke who the pylons; not more than 12-15m so was a great authority on blennies. And you need to agree with your buddies it also turns out that it isn’t a secretary in advance what time you will meet up blenny at all but a spinyhead blenny again as it is possible to do very long, but the differences are so small that solitary dives here. they are impossible to spot with the naked eye. Each group of pylons hosts a different selection of fish. One or two are a During the day we would often see haven to great shoals of snapper or tarpon on the reef, usually on their surgeonfish but each of them has own but occasionally there might be their own individual appeal. You will more. This beautiful, large, silver fish find octopus, squads of squid, French looks close-up as if it is made from Angelfish, trumpet fish, single large polished stainless steel segments. In barracuda, lime green moray eels to the early evening, attracted by the name a few. lights, you can see them from the restaurant, hunting in the shallow I was lucky enough to go back several water of the lagoon below. times over the entire two weeks but on my last day, disappointment – a But for me – and no doubt for most cargo ship had moored there. We other people - the high-light of this learned later that three stow-aways diving destination has to be the Salt now claiming asylum had been Pier. I’d missed it the first time around clinging to the rudder for nine days as there was a large cargo vessel on their journey from Dominica. They moored up to it for days and this had backpacks with food and water means that you are not allowed to dive and it was only because the ship was there. unladen that the rudder sat so high out of the water. How easy it might About a twenty-minute drive from the have been to fall in and on to the hotel, you pass the open salt pans of propellor. They were lucky to be alive. evaporating sea-water which fringe the coast leading up to and beyond the A nearby food van advertises lionfish Salt Pier. Some of them are pink. Bottom right: Toby. Top: Tube sponge 106 • BSoUP in focus

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Above: Teeth of a filefish. Right: Smooth Trunkfish 108 • BSoUP in focus

Above: Scorpionfish on housereef. Below: Tarpon Spring / Summer 2022 BSoUP in focus • 109

burgers for lunch and our hotel would well have been because the whole cook your own lionfish for you for world had just been released from $12 if you managed to catch one. covid detention and Bonaire was now We only saw one or two whilst diving completely full. More than once we so either there aren’t very many or retreated back to our hotel for chicken they’ve all been eaten. sate by the sea at Blennies restaurant and wondered why we had bothered Drive a little further on and you realise to look elsewhere. just how spartan and undeveloped this island still is. There are no tall trees; For my second week, I was joining just scrubland, cacti and flamingos three friends who had booked a villa and it’s hot and dusty and windy. But at the hotel next door, Captain Don’s. it is the same wind that also enables The bungalow I’d stayed in 6 years the daring and highly skilled kite- before had been demolished, along surfers to perform their acrobatic with all the others in that quarter manoevres above the water, a little and a huge rebuilding programme further on. of multi-storey apartments was now underway. On our non-diving day at the end of the first week, we circumnavigated the I preferred our villa to the apartment; island, determined to find somewhere the facilities were much better, local to eat. We found a Haitian everything was on the ground floor shasck (restaurant would be too grand and we had an enormous outside a description) where we sat around patio and drying area. a large wooden cable reel and ate delicious curried goat with black rice Diving on the house-reef was as and peas. simple as it had been before but the truck-diving scenario was not as easy Eating out in the island’s capital, as at Buddy. First, you had to find Kralendijk is expensive and, not your vehicle and then back it up as surprisingly, rather limited since close as you could to the dive centre. everything has to be imported. Then you had to carry your tanks One night we opted for sushi and, some distance, together with all your at US$85 per head, I would have dive gear and weights. There was expected rather more than three kinds also the need to carry your camera of sushi. from the villa. All heavy stuff. Makes you realise just how spoilt we are It was not easy to find restaurants that when it comes to liveaboards! were not fully booked. This could 110 • BSoUP in focus

Toby in Vase sponge when really, they should stick to more local cuisine. I resent paying through The in-house restaurant, Rum Runners, the nose for their generally failed overlooking the sea at Captain Don’s attempts at gourmet food! was first class with a great bar. I’d have been happy to eat there every However, after a thoroughly wonderful night. fortnight having managed not to break a leg on any of the challenging beach Turned out that one of the other dives, I came away with a fresh batch great restaurants in Bonaire was just of images, have bonded for life with next door, in the Buddy Dive Resort both sets of diving buddies with whom – Ingridients – with the emphasis I drank lots of gin and consumed on Ingrid. It had been where we’d many tubes of pringles and cannot eaten breakfast every morning without wait to go back. realising what it morphed into at sunset. My big gripe with all these smart restaurants is that, given the limited ingredients at their disposal, they still try to reproduce what they think Europeans and Americans want to eat Spring / Summer 2022 BSoUP in focus • 111

Life after bleaching by Dr Diane Gan changes the mix of fish species as the specialists that feed exclusively on corals diminish in numbers for obvious reasons and those that feed on seaweed increase, with consequences for bio-diversity. We have all heard about Coral reefs provide a very special coral reef bleaching events. habitat for all kinds of critters There have been some and baby fish, as well as the very bad incidents in 2016 and adult fish resident on the reef. As 2017, which particularly affected photographers we all love to take the Great Barrier Reef, where half pictures of the shrimps and crabs the corals were damaged. But have that hide in the nooks and crannies, you ever wondered what happens as well as the colourful fish that eat to those reefs afterwards? Not all coral and clean the algae that could the corals that bleach die, which is smother them: emperor angel fish, good news. But some species are surgeon fish, trigger fish, damsel better at recolonising damaged reefs fish and parrot fish, to name but a so that where they do recover, the few. It should be said that all of this balance of species of coral and fish is not necessarily beneficial to the is fundamentally changed. reef, as some species can create areas of significant scarring and A study in the Seychelles found that damage on the coral, and one of half the reefs bounced back quickly. these is the Humphead Parrot fish. It But what happened to the rest? They is even suggested by Rogers (2021) were taken over by macroalgae or that culling coralliverous predators sea weeds. This does not give the such as the crown of thorns can help corals any chance to recover. It also corals to recover faster [1]. There are around 140 species of coralliverous fish, which either feed exclusively on coral or include coral in their diet. Some feed only on 112 • BSoUP in focus

a particular species of coral, and doomed? The answer from recent coral bleaching can devastate these studies undertaken on coral reefs specialist feeders. This could result appears to be not necessarily. [4]. in the dominance of the generalist What these new coral reefs will look species, and the disappearance of like in the future is uncertain at this some specialised feeders. time but they are unlikely to be the same as the ones we currently know Another significant impact of global and love. warming is found in the temperate kelp forests. Warmer water has the impact of killing the kelp. They are also being eaten by herbivorous species which are displaced from the tropics [2]. It has been noted that coral reefs are extending into areas where the water is cooler and, in some cases, replacing kelp [3]. However, this study found that not all coral larvae can reach these new habitats, which again impacts on the potential biodiversity that is currently found in tropical reef systems. So, the bottom line is, are coral reefs References: 1. Rogers, J.G.D., Plagányi, É.E. Culling corallivores improves short-term coral recovery under bleaching scenarios. Nat Commun 13, 2520 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-30213-x 2. Fernandez, S., The long view: Studying kelp forests and coral reefs to understand and predict the effects of climate change, Phy.Org, Biology, University of California - Santa Barbara, published 15th June 2021, https:// phys.org/news/2021-06-view-kelp-forests-coral-reefs.html 3. Anon, Coral reefs shifting away from equator, new study finds, University of Washington, School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, July 2019, https://fish. uw.edu/2019/07/coral-reefs-shifting-away-from-equator-new-study-finds/ 4. Bennett, P., Great Barrier Reef at Risk of More Mass Bleaching, EcoWatch, published Jan 31, 2022, https://www.ecowatch.com/great-barrier-reef- bleaching.html Spring / Summer 2022 BSoUP in focus • 113